I'm sure WF100XMF is on everybody's shortlist when they're looking for new earbuds. As of this review, the earbuds cost £249 on Amazon.
Right off the bat, I would say the WF100XMF offers one of the best active noise cancellations and it completely removes transport noises. It also has, on paper one of the longest battery life. However, its software and comfort leave much to be desired.
One thing I don't like about the headphone is that you have to choose the function of the left and right earbud. You can't customize the gesture. By default, it's the right ear control music playback and Google assistant while the left controls noise cancellation levels and pass-through mode. As you notice, this means if you want to adjust the volume, you have to change one of the default configurations. If you switch the left ear's shortcuts, you lose the ability to turn off noise cancellation on demand and the ability to have a pass-through mode (hold to turn off noise cancellation and turn down media volume).
This is somewhat mitigated by the speak to chat mode, which detects your voice and kills media audio, and turns off noise cancellation. You can also set it up so that the app detects your location and turn off noise canceling when you arrive at that location. The app can also detect the movement and set the headphone into "sitting, walking, running, or commuting" mode. However, if you're on the bus, it will occasionally return to sitting mode when the bus pulls into a bus stop. This can be a bit distracting if you have set up sitting mode to have noise cancellation turned off. The GPS mode switch is a bit glitchy at times as it detected that I'm at a place a good few distances from my place. For example, I have set up the headphone to turn off noise cancellation when I'm at the local bus station but it detects that I'm at the bus stop when I'm at the other side of the city, 0.3 miles from the bus station. The chat to talk can be a bit sensitive also. It thinks I'm talking when I'm just coughing.
This headphone comes with native Google Assitant.
That said, the audio of the headphone sounds OK. It doesn't have that deep bass but the music comes in nice and clear. You can customize the sound using the inbuilt equalizer. The foam head tip does its job keeping outside noise out.
Now we come with my biggest complaint about the headphone. Comfort. For me, the headphone is a bit uncomfortable. The hard flat part of the headphone causes pain in my ear as I move my head around. Only completely removing the headset from my ear removes this pain. Also, I found out that the foam tip comes off the headphones and remains in the ear! Not exactly great when you're nowhere near a first aid kit. I have this happen once when I was in town and to my chagrin, nobody in town had a tweezer in their first aid kit.
In summary, the head bud has:
- Great active noise cancellation
- Good audio quality
- Excellent battery
- Low comfort
- Not easily customizable software
- Earbud shortcuts can be a bit rigid.
